The Moonlight & Sunshine controller guide — any pad, up to 4 players
Your stream looks perfect, but the controller won't show up — or you can only get one working. It's almost always the client device's Bluetooth, not Moonlight itself. Here's how to feed it any pad, cleanly, up to four at once.
The thing nobody tells you about Moonlight controllers
Moonlight doesn't have its own controller magic. It passes through whatever controller the client device has already paired — your phone, your PC, or your Fire TV Stick — and Sunshine turns that into a virtual gamepad on the gaming PC. That works great when the client is a phone. It falls apart when the client is a device with weak Bluetooth:
- A Fire TV Stick that won't pair your DualSense or Xbox pad gives Moonlight nothing to forward — there's nothing Moonlight can do about a controller Fire OS rejects.
- Trying to connect two or more Bluetooth pads to a Fire TV or Android TV client often collapses them all to Player 1, or mis-assigns the ports.
The fix isn't a Moonlight setting. It's supplying the client with a controller it can actually use.
Controller Gateway is the missing input layer
Pair your controllers to your phone, and Controller Gateway relays them to the client (Fire Stick or PC) as standard Xbox controllers — which Moonlight forwards without complaint. Up to four players, low latency, and no dependence on the client's Bluetooth at all.
Get Controller GatewayHow to set it up
Streaming to a Fire TV Stick or Android TV
- Pair your controller(s) to your phone over Bluetooth.
- Enable ADB debugging on the Fire TV (Settings → My Fire TV → About → tap the name 7×), then in Controller Gateway tap Find, choose the stick, and Start.
- Open Moonlight on the Fire Stick and connect to your PC — it now sees your controller(s) as standard Xbox pads.
Streaming to a Windows PC
- Install the free Controller Gateway PC receiver.
- Pair your controller to your phone, then Find PC → Start.
- Run Moonlight on the PC — the relayed pad is already a standard Xbox controller, so it forwards straight through Sunshine's virtual gamepad on the host.
The relay adds only about 2 ms one-way on 5 GHz Wi-Fi, and on older Fire Sticks it actually lowers total controller lag versus the stick's own Bluetooth (~83 ms vs up to ~167 ms in our tests — and players report direct Bluetooth as bad as ~500 ms in the wild). Ideal for streaming, where every millisecond matters.
Local co-op, done right
Because each controller is relayed as its own player, you get clean P1–P4 assignment even on clients where pairing multiple Bluetooth pads normally breaks. Great for couch co-op and party games streamed to the TV.
Give Moonlight a controller it can actually use.
Any pad, on your Fire TV or PC, up to four players — independent of the client's Bluetooth.